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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

INAUGURATION 2029

Marie: I don't know why this video came up on my YouTube recommendations, but it did. I watched it on a large-ish teevee, and I found it fascinating. ~~~

 

Hubris. One would think that a married man smart enough to start up and operate his own tech company was also smart enough to know that you don't take your girlfriend to a public concert where the equipment includes a jumbotron -- unless you want to get caught on the big camera with your arms around said girlfriend. Ah, but for Andy Bryon, CEO of A company called Astronomer, and also maybe his wife, Wednesday was a night that will live in infamy. New York Times link. ~~~

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Sunday
Apr172016

Different Rules

CW: I did respond to MoDo's column, but the Times didn't publish it for 12-14 hours after her column went up, so my comment is difficult to find. Here it is:


Yeah, you're right. But there are four quasi-viable candidates left in the presidential nominating races, and not a one of them says "I'm sorry" for even outrageous distortions, outright lies or flagrant lapses of judgment. The rules of decorum for presidential candidates are different from the rules for the rest of us.

All of these top candidates believe the words, "I'm sorry" are a sign of weakness. And their success suggests they're right.

Most women are good at saying "I'm sorry," to a fault. We say it even when we have nothing to be sorry about. It's a nearly automatic response to the most minor exchange. "I'm sorry the elevator is slow." "I'm sorry the grocery store was out of your brand of cornflakes." Apologies are expected of us. They demonstrate that we are polite, deferential, caring, non-assertive -- and feminine.

That is precisely why Hillary can't say "I'm sorry." When and if she does, her opponents will accuse her of being a weak girly-girl, not up to the tough job of president.

Any feminist gets that. Maureen Dowd should, too. If being a presidential candidate means never having to say you're sorry, it applies to all candidates, not just the ones who are boys.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (2)

There have been many articles recently about how women should not say "sorry" so much. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/04/sorry-language-shamers-but-women-just-dont-need-your-new-email-policing-app/

April 17, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterLT

Good one, Marie. It seems to me that Clinton did say she had "MADE A MISTAKE" re: her vote on Iraq. And sometimes, after making mistakes and learning from them, it behoves one to say, "What difference does it make" now when it's crystal clear one has learned from those mistakes. "Sorry" sounds vapid––something we women want to shy away from.

April 17, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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